Football is the world’s biggest grossing sport. Now they want to bleed it dry.
During these latter days of late-stage capitalism and early days of techno-fascism/feudalism, a useful rule of thumb is that one can never be too cynical about our overlords’ actions and intentions. When the 2026 World Cup began, we asked how much damage Donald Trump’s reverse Midas touch could inflict on the world’s greatest sports event. Even our worst-case prognosis fell dramatically short.
Worse still, the damage continues to grow, which is why our coverage of the Trump-Infantino-run 2026 World Cup continues — almost two full weeks after the event ended. This was not supposed to happen. The fallout from the 2026 World Cup was supposed to have subsided by now, not keep growing. Once again, my apologies to non-football fans. To borrow from Michael Corleone…
A quick recap of events to date…
FIFA’s money grubbing President, Gianni Infantino, set the tone of the tournament way back in November by awarding President Trump FIFA’s inaugural Mickey Mouse peace prize — a move critics claimed was a violation of the governing body’s rules on political neutrality. FIFA would also end up renting the 17th floor of Trump Tower in the months leading up the event.
During the tournament itself, the FIFA World Cup became just another stage for Trump’s cruelty and corruption. The US authorities denied entry to the Somali referee Omar Artan as well as countless football fans. The Trump administration also took the unprecedented step of barring the Iranian national side from spending the night in the US following WC matches.
FIFA is also no slouch when it comes to corruption and greed. Its decision to adopt dynamic pricing strategies for the matches as well as profit from inflated secondary prices meant that most fans of moderate means were priced out of seats. Other controversies included the decision to introduce mandatory three-minute commercial hydration breaks in the first and second halves of games, effectively carving the matches into US-style quarters.
The biggest scandal came later in the tournament when FIFA bowed to pressure from Trump administration figures, including Trump himself, to revoke a one-match suspension for US forward Folarin Balogun for the quarter-final against Belgium. The violence that erupted at the final whistle of the final between Spain and Argentina, instigated by angry Argentine players, seemed a fitting end to the tournament as a whole.
But all of this paled into insignificance with what would come after the event. After their national side lost, deservedly, to Spain in the final, many Argentines are struggling to come to terms with the new reality of defeat. If the chatter on social media is any indication, some are convinced that [V]Argentina was the victim of a FIFA conspiracy, despite having benefited disproportionately from refereeing decisions throughout the tournament.
The Milei government has taken advantage of the national mood by changing the Migration Law by decree to enable the expulsion of any foreign citizens who express “messages of hatred” against Argentina or its symbols. As NC reader Ciroc wrote in response to my post on Milei’s recent attacks on Brazil’s President Lula, Milei had “clearly hoped a victory would boost his approval ratings… Now that that dream has been shattered, he can only lash out.”
But the biggest scandal of all came on Tuesday, when Infantino unveiled plans to effectively privatise the World Cup, creating a new for-profit entity that will give US investors direct exposure to the tournament’s commercial activities (and future growth). If the plan comes to fruition, the lead investor will reportedly be Thrive Eternal, a private equity fund founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
But as some have pointed out, as long as Infantino is in charge of FIFA, it will be the Trump-aligned investors who will effectively enjoy de facto majority voting rights. Put simply, this is about squeezing every last drop of financial value out of the sport until it’s been sucked dry. Today, football, once the preserve of the working classes, is the world’s biggest grossing sport and arguably the one most corrupted by corporate interests.
Now they want to bleed it dry.
How Infantino hopes (or hoped) to achieve that goal is quite simple: to buy the votes of smaller, poorer national football associations in the Global South by offering the following two inducements:
- The possibility of participating in future enlarged World Cups. The 2026 WC, which was enlarged to 48 teams, saw four countries playing in the tournament for the first time: Curacao, Jordan, Uzbekistan and Cape Verde, which even reached the knock-out stage where they almost beat Argentina on one of the tournament’s best matches. Infantino is now offering the juicy prospect of a 64-team tournament in 2030.
- A one-off payment of $40 million to each association provided a majority of associations agree to the proposal. The associations have only five weeks to make their decision — a decision that will change FIFA’s organisation structures beyond all recognition. If a majority reject the proposal, the associations will receive only a third of the amount.
Some countries have already expressed an interest in the offer…
The scandal gets even worse when you look at the numbers. Infantino looking to sell a sizable chunk of a very profitable non-profit organisation (a topic for another day) to senior Trump insiders, he seems to be doing so at a very low price, as Duncan Castles, a sports journalist with The Times of London, points out with some back-of-the-envelope maths:
Infantino wants to sell the World Cup to the Trump mafia and others for $4.2billion • [At] a valuation of $20bn, this implies the sale of a 21% stake • 11 days ago FIFA said it expected its 2023-26 revenues to ‘top $15billion’ • So that’s $4.2bn to purchase 21% of ~$3.75bn of annual revenue. A multiple of 5.33x revenue
In 2019, Silver Lake paid a multiple of 5.8x revenue to buy around 10% of City Football Group • BlueCo paid a multiple of 4.9 to buy Chelsea in a UK-government-enforced sale • Ineos paid a multiple of between 7 & 8 to buy 25% of Manchester United • In 2025 a minority stake in MLS club Los Angeles FC sold at 7.9x revenue • The company which owns UFC and WWE currently trades on a multiple of 6.2x revenue • The last Major League Baseball franchise to change hands went for 5.3x revenue • NFL’s Washington Commanders recently sold for 10x revenue • NBA’s LA Lakers are in the process of being sold for ~16x revenue.
The World Cup is the most popular sporting event humanity has ever developed. Some would argue it is our most important cross-cultural event. As @rpmcomooften points out, it has essentially zero acquisition costs for talent (compare that to other sports properties).
None of the football clubs above make anything vaguely approaching the profits of the World Cup, yet Gianni Infantino wants to sell football’s crown jewel at a similar or lower valuation. Either Infantino is stupid enough to be selling the World Cup at a price hugely under its true value, or he has a personal incentive to do exactly that.
Readers will be unsurprised to learn that the prospectus for the deal was drawn up by JP Morgan, the US bank that was also behind the failed European Super League breakaway five years ago. As of a few months ago, the lender was also in talks to provide banking services to the Trump’s Board of Peace initiative, which is tasked with rebuilding Gaza even as Israel continues the genocide there.
The sheer scale of greed and corruption has left many football fans and pundits pining for the more genteel graft of yesteryear…
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Nick Corbishley 